Springtime Randomness

Though it's been quiet here on the blog, it certainly hasn't been so in my daily life.  It's springtime, and therefore lots of projects to tackle now that the weather has become more bearable.  Mulching, painting, cleaning, it fills my days now (well, besides the usual child-rearing and cooking and all that other good stuff).

We've decided that this is the summer to have the house painted.  The window trim is peeling like crazy and in need of attention, and we've been wanting to match the house to our garage siding.

My kombucha has been improving batch by batch.  So far I've flavored it with strawberries, blueberries and raisins and ginger.

The raisin/ginger so far has been my favorite (above on the left, the other is blueberry).  It's been nice having in the morning, before I drug myself with coffee.

And oh yeah, I suppose Easter was thrown in there someplace.  The boys loved the knitted rabbits and giant fabric eggs I made for them.

Someone got a little sunburned the day before--oops.  But chocolate made up for that.

The bunnies turned out SO cute!  And the eggs were simple to sew.  I used a pattern from Martha Stewart and made 10 of them in an hour (minus the stuffing part).  Also from Martha, a recipe for a Polish Easter Babka, which turned out pretty good.  It's like an eggy sweet bread, like challah.

The Easter baskets had some other goodies, like stickers, giant chalk, a butterfly net, wind-up animals and of course chocolate and gum.

It was a great weekend, with an egg hut,

gorgeous weather, capped off by dinner with friends.  What a great way to kick of spring!

Rabbits and Shoulders

Have you ever had to function without a hand? Or a leg? Or a hand? Or an eye?  Parenting takes everything you can give physically, but this week I'm muddling through with one arm.  Stupid me popped my shoulder out of place on Sunday, while painting the upstairs hallway. 

It popped back in (I know, SO gross!) so my arm works, albeit poorly.  I did this once before during a field hockey game in high school, and the possibility of an injury like this happening again is pretty likely.  Wonderful.

I'm pissed at myself for not being careful or mindful (despite my reminders to the boys about being careful all day long).  I was standing on a kiddie chair, talking with Chris and it slipped out from under me.  I grabbed the doorway and there it went, arm stuck at an unnatural angle.  It's my fault: I was too lazy to lug the ladder upstairs and relied on an easily available but poor substitute.  I've probably seriously messed up my yoga practice, which really sucks. I can't imagine doing Down Dog with my arm, but I'm trying to practice other poses so I'm not entirely un-limber at the end of all this.

Thankfully, I'm much better today than Sunday, but wrangling Jude for clothing and diaper changes is difficult.  And I still can't fasten or unfasten my bra.  For one moment, I wish I was a guy, able to handle the job with just one hand. :)

I also thankful that I am still able to knit, and have been furiously trying to finish these two rabbits for the boys' Easter baskets.  It helps that I can catch up on the latest season of Mad Men on Netflix while doing so.

I am giddy about how adorable this rabbit is.  I'm knitting it from a free Ravelry pattern if you're interested.  It needs some button eyes, but I haven't found the perfect ones yet.  Wooden ones would be perfect, huh?  I'm still working on Jude's, which is going to be a darker brown than Soren's and with a green bowtie instead of blue.

It requires a lot of sewing, which I hate, and some blocking to make the pieces flat, but the result is so worth it.

I think they'll be really excited on Easter morning when they see these guys.  They loved the sock ones from a few years ago (made from a Lil Boo Blue tutorial)

So my week of one-armed wrangling is going better than I expected.  I'm trying to enjoy the benefits, like not having to cook much or carrying a 50 pound someone to the bathroom at night for a potty break.  Hopefully I'll be back in the groove by the weekend--I don't want to have a compromised birthday dinner!  Thankfully, we're going to The Melting Pot, so I just need one arm to poke those cubes of bread into cheese.